or in a moment the report as of a thousand
cannon thundered through the air, and fragments of clay, rock, and
shingle fell, thick as hail, and heavy as millstones, all around.

Immediately after a piercing cry for aid burst upon their ear, and
spread over land and water.

"God of Heaven!" exclaimed Springall, "it is not possible that any human
creature could have been within the place!" and he stretched himself
forward, and looked up to where the cry was uttered.

The young man, whose locks were then light as the golden beams of the
sun, and whose step was as free as that of the mountain roe, lived to be
very old, and his hair grew white, and his free step crippled, before
death claimed his subject; he was moreover one acquainted in after years
with much strife and toil, and earned honour, and wealth, and
distinction; but often has he declared that never had he witnessed any
thing which so appalled his soul as the sight he beheld on that
remembered morning. He seized Roupall's arm with convulsive energy, and
dragged him forward, heedless of the storm of clay and stones that was
still pelting around them. Wherever the train had fired, the crag had
been thrown out; and as there were but few combustibles within its
holes, and the gay sunlight had shorn the flames of their brightness,
the objects that struck the gaze of the lookers on were the dark hollows
vomiting forth columns of black and noisome smoke, streaked with a murky
red.

As the fire made its way according to the direction of the meandering
powder, which Dalton himself had laid in case of surprise, the earth
above reeled, and shook, and sent forth groans, like those of troubled
nature when a rude earthquake bursts asunder what the Almighty united
with such matchless skill. The lower train that Springall fired had cast
forth, amongst rocks and stones, the mass of clay in which was the
loophole through which Fleetword had looked out upon the wide sea.
Within the chasm thus created was the figure of a living man. He stood
there with uplifted hands, lacking courage to advance; for beneath, the
wreathed smoke and dim hot fume of the consuming fire told him of
certain death; unable to retreat,--for the insidious flame had already
destroyed the door which Roupall had failed to move, and danced, like a
fiend at play with destruction, from rafter to rafter, and beam to beam,
of the devoted place.

"Ha!" exclaimed the reckless rover, with a calmness which at the mome